PI on Redhat Enterprise Linux 4+5

[georg.viehoever]

Hi,

I tried to run PI 1.6.9 on Redhat Enterprise Linux 4+5.
- RHEL 4: I just get

Code: [Select]

bin/PixInsight.sh
/.../bin/PixInsight: error while loading shared libraries: requires glibc 2.5 or later dynamic linker- RHEL 5: I just get

Code: [Select]

bin/PixInsight.sh
/.../bin/PixInsight: error while loading shared libraries: /.../bin/lib/libssh2.so.1: ELF file OS ABI invalid
I know that these Redhat releases are incredibly old by the standards of Fedora or Ubuntu, but they are still popular in commercial and scientific computing (e.g. in the form of CentOS).

Questions:
- is there any chance to get PI running on these platforms?
- http://pixinsight.com/sysreq/index.html states that it should run on RHEL5. This apparently is wrong. Note that RHEL5 is based on Fedora 6 - which seems not to be supported in the fedora release list on the same page. Any plans to fix this?

Georg

[georg.viehoever]

Some additional information on RHEL5:
- I replaced libssh2 by the version found on http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/14512916/dir/redhat_el_5/com/libssh2-1.2.7-1.el5.pp.x86_64.rpm.html, and extracted it using the method described in http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-to-extract-an-rpm-package-without-installing-it.html
- PI no longer complains about libssh2, but about GLIBC. Investigating a little bit with ldd reveals that PI actually requires different versions of glibc for its diferent pieces... which wories me a little bit.

Code: [Select]

ldd bin/PixInsightbin/PixInsight: /usr/lib64/libidn.so.11: no version information available (required by bin/PixInsight)
bin/PixInsight: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by bin/PixInsight)
bin/PixInsight: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.9' not found (required by ./bin/lib/libQtGui.so.4)
bin/PixInsight: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.10' not found (required by ./bin/lib/libQtNetwork.so.4)
bin/PixInsight: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.9' not found (required by ./bin/lib/libQtCore.so.4)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib64/libSM.so.6 (0x00002b682727f000)
...

So still no joy 
Georg

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Georg,

It seems that the system requirements page is a bit outdated now    I'll update it ASAP.

Indeed PI won't run with ld < 2.5 —this is the first error you got with RHEL 4—, which excludes very old Linux distros. I have no plans to fix this, since it would involve rebuilding everything to upload a special version for extremely old systems. We have other priorities.

The second error is stranger. The "ELF file OS ABI invalid" message means that the  ABI (Application Binary Interface) is incompatible with the target machine/OS. This is weird. Could you please tell me what the output of this command is:

readelf -h <file>

where <file> is some binary or application that runs on your RHEL 5 system?

[georg.viehoever]

...
readelf -h <file>

where <file> is some binary or application that runs on your RHEL 5 system?

Code: [Select]

readelf -h /bin/ls
ELF Header:
  Magic:   7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  Class:                             ELF64
  Data:                              2's complement, little endian
  Version:                           1 (current)
  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - System V
  ABI Version:                       0
  Type:                              EXEC (Executable file)
  Machine:                           Advanced Micro Devices X86-64
  Version:                           0x1
  Entry point address:               0x402460
  Start of program headers:          64 (bytes into file)
  Start of section headers:          84248 (bytes into file)
  Flags:                             0x0
  Size of this header:               64 (bytes)
  Size of program headers:           56 (bytes)
  Number of program headers:         8
  Size of section headers:           64 (bytes)
  Number of section headers:         28
  Section header string table index: 27

[Juan Conejero]

The difference is in the OS/ABI entry. Fir the libssh2.so.1 object It is:

  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - Linux

but should be:

  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - System V

I'll fix this in the next version. However, modern versions of ld don't cause any problem due to this difference.

Regarding the version of glibc, you probably can update it. What's the output of:

rpm -q glibc

[georg.viehoever]

...Regarding the version of glibc, you probably can update it. What's the output of:

rpm -q glibc

Code: [Select]

rpm -q glibc
glibc-2.5-49
glibc-2.5-49
Unfortunately, I am not root on this system, so I cannot update to a new glibc version. So which files would I need to put into PixInsight/bin/lib, and where can I get them? A quick google search did not give me a simple solution (see for example http://www.held.org.il/blog/2008/03/glibc-27-on-centos-rhel-5/ )
Georg

[georg.viehoever]

Hi,

I did some investigation regarding an upgraded glibc on RHEL5:
- first of all, it is not a good idea to upgrade the system glibc. If you do that, many system programs are likely to fail. See for example http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/some-wrong-with-glibc-809774/
- I attempted to compile a local libc.so.6 from source, but all attempts failed. The configure usually goes fine, but the make fails at some point or other. I tried with several versions of gcc and binutils. Judging from what I google, compiling this is difficult - and I am more of an application than a kernel guy.
- A friend of mine said that he would recommend to compile on the oldest system that needs to be supported. Compiling on a recent Fedora version and hoping to get it running on an "old" linux often fails.

If somebody knows how to get PI running on RHEL5 despite of this problem, I would welcome hints.

Georg

[Carlos Milovic]

Hi Georg
Yes, the same happened in Ubuntu and Fedora, when Juan upgraded to the last glibc. I recall having a period of nearly two months waiting for the new Ubuntu release to be able to run the latest PI. I would avoid manually upgrading it on the whole OS.

Not a good solution, but maybe you should run PI using wine, or another virtual OS...

[Nocturnal]

I've experienced DLL-hell quite a few times with linux. I have (had) to use it at work but I avoid it as much as possible at home. That said, a VM could also run a more recent Linux version, right?

[georg.viehoever]

Sander, you are right: DLL hell has caught up on Linux - actually, Windows is doing much better with compatibility between the different releases than Linux is doing these days.

Carlos: Unfortunately, I cannot force the system provider to upgrade to more recent releases. Even if CentOS6 finally comes out, it is unlikely that the system will be upgraded soon. If you are providing compute services to others you need to be more conservative than with desktop class Linuxes.

Running a VM may be something I try later. Unfortunately, this will cost performance. And this is exactly the reason why I wanted to try PI on really big+fast servers. I was hoping an image integration of 100+ images could be done in seconds  8), making it possible to quickly experiment with parameters.

Georg

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Georg,

I understand your motivation to run PI on a big server machine. However please understand that PixInsight is a high-end desktop/workstation application. It must be fully compatible and well integrated with the latest releases of mainstream desktop environments on UNIX/Linux (GNOME and KDE), and this requires building it with up-to-date system tools and libraries. You can ask us for compatibility with Fedora 11 and perhaps Fedora 10, but RHEL 5 is too much (RHEL 5 was forked from Fedora Core 6). We probably can build special versions for these old distributions but I can't promise anything in the short term; our workload is high enough as it is

[georg.viehoever]

Hi Juan,

I agree with your point of view. Just fix http://pixinsight.com/sysreq/index.html before anyone else invests time into trying to run PI on an unsupported platform.

Have a beautiful spring day!  8)

Georg